3 September 1982
It is a wonderful evening and thank you for asking somebody from south of the border to share a part of it with you. It is a great occasion and 25 years in coalition is something to remember. The people who have to run coalitions get good of experience in making it work and making it work smoothly and it is up to both sides to make that possible. But those who have to run coalitions get a lot of advice sometimes from people who have never run a coalition in their lives and if the advice is good that is fair enough, but if the advice is bad you have to reject it and sometimes people don't like having their advice rejected, but they haven't had the experience and they don't know what has to be done. For my part let me say that I am the luckiest Prime Minister that ever was with Doug Anthony as my lieutenant. We watch and learn from what happens from north of the border but it is important for the good Government of Queensland and the good Government of the Commonwealth because without a coalition in Queensland the socialists would be in town and without a coalition. in Canberra the socialists would be in power and I do not think any of us intend to let that happen.
I want apologise for Tamie, she wanted to be here very much tonight but we still have one school-aged kid and there are family obligations so she had to go back early this morning. We have had a day or two at Burketown, and if I had known you needed something to eat tonight I could easily have got up a little earlier and caught more fish, I thought I only had to feed myself for breakfast. They had a dinner with perhaps a few more people than are here tonight, but they were not all Queenslanders, they had come from Murray Bridge from Victoria, they had come from New South Wales and -elsewhere. They had a few speeches and somebody got up to make a speech and I do not know why but he went back to 1941 and the Brisbane Line. He said he did not like the business about giving away Australia north of the Brisbane Line, he thought that what they ought to plan to do is exactly what the Premier has been doing the last few years give away the country to the south.
The Premier rang me up two or three weeks ago at the early stages before the strike really became serious and he said: " Malcolm, if I go into bat on this 38-hours, you are not going to offer them all 36-hours or something like that are you?" I said: " no Joh, don't worry about that." He said: " we have knocked off compulsory unions for public servants", I said: " good", he said: " well what are you going to do?" I said: " well, we never had it". Then he said: " well, we are not going to collect union dues anymore, will you follow us in that?", I said: " we stopped collecting union dues four years ago, I am glad you are with us." He said: " Malcolm, you might think you are ahead, but you wait a couple of days.” We all know what happened.
This Coalition won in 1957 with the biggest swing against any government that has ever happened in the history of Australia and that says something about the Labor Party that was in before and the point has been made that the Labor Party hasn't changed that much. They get a bit more extreme, they go a bit further to the left and they certainly would destroy what has been built up if they had an opportunity to do so. A great deal has been achieved in Queensland but I do not take a great deal of pleasure from the fact that while 98% of it is entirely due to Queensland and Queensland policies there is a growing proportion of it that is going to be entirely the responsibility of New South Wales and Victoria and the policies that the socialists in those two places are pursuing. You were nearly getting about $ 1 billion a week out of Mr Cain with his probate duty that he was going to put back on, and there are people caning here all the timre because the y do not like the sortsi of policies that are being pursued in those two states. That of course makes it so much easier but nevertheless, what has been done has been remarkable.
We do need to take note of the fact that the new Victorian Government is the most ideological committed government in the whole history of Australia. He might go about it a bit more skilfully as Mr Whitlam did, not making quite as much noise in the way he sought to undermine our arrangements with the United States and our defence treaties, the way Mr Cain is seeking to apply the ideology of the socialist left in my own state is something which gives us all a good deal of concern. There are things that happen in the Labor Party which we often don’t bother to point out. In their recent conferences they committed themselves clearly and firmly to turning Australia into a republic and in their last conference they committed themselves to tearing up the Australian Flag and tearing up the Australian constitution. Why shouldn't we point these things out more often than we do?
There are some odd things about the Labor Party also, there has been a lot written about Mr Costigan over the last few days. People seem to have forgotten that Mr Costigan was originally appointed to inquire into a union, the Painters and Dockers Union, and I thought I might just read out a few things about this Union because it has some peculiar characteristics and relationships. In Victoria the Union is under the control of hardened criminals the Royal Commissioner says. There has been some 15 murders that took place between 1970 and 1979.. The two worst years were 1971 where three murders took place, and 1979 when four took place. Federal Secretary Gordon told the Sweeney Royal Commission: " we catch and kill our own". That apparently is exactlywhat the union does. Their answer to any interference into their activities is not to use the processes of the law but rather, threats, violence and intimidation. In this way the Royal Commissioner says: " the painters and dockers have assumed for themselves a position outside the law and have maintained that " position by violence
If there was anyone or any organisation associated with the National Party or the Liberal Party that had that record I haven't the slightest doubt that we would be moving to disaffiliate them, get rid of them, kick them out so fast it would be nobody's business. But what does Senator Georges do? He just says they are misunderstood. In Victoria of course, and in other states they are affiliated with the Labor Party, they send their representatives along to the policy making body of the Party and they are some of the people who control the Labor politicians. It is going to be interesting to see if Mr Hayden or Mr Cain or any of the others try and clean up their own business.
Victoria is also becoming a refuge for tired, worn out Labor politicians. Joh, you seemed to indicate a bit of sympathy for Mr Casey up here, I hope you don't get too sympathetic for him. Mr Cain has given Mr Dunstan a job, I am told he is going to give Mr Grassby a job, if you want to get rid of S Mr Casey he would probably give him a job too, and-when Mr Wran is kicked out of New South Wales I suppose he will give him a job and there is no way that New South Welshmen would buy him again, after the way he has wrecked the state.
We are going to try and get rid of Mr Cain in Victoria in the next election but our own Opposition there has to work vigorously and hard. There is one fallacy that Parties sometimes have. If you have been in for a'long time, give the poor Opposition a go for three years and brighten ourselves up. We have learnt before that three years can be a long time and an enormous amount of damage can be done and that has been demonstrated again in Victoria. If you are having any doubts about the directions you are pursuing just visit Sydney or Melbourne a little more often and that is going to be just as good as visiting overseas and then you will know that Queensland is the best place in the world. The sense of direction that everyone seems to have in this state Sis refreshing and whether it is Burketown, Brisbane or Townsville, the sense of direction and purpose, the sense of believing in free enterprise, because it is a way of life, is something that is good to see.
Joh and Llew I would like to congratulate you both on the first years. There is another 25 year dinner in Lismore in a few weeks time. I do not know if any of you have been invited to that, but if you haven't been invited, it is Doug Anthony's years in Parliament and he has asked me to go along,. so I ask all of you to come along as well.
Thank you for asking me to be a part of this evening. It is a memorable time in the history of Queensland and the history of a great State. The achievements that you have worked hard for over the years r1OW are evident, it can be seen on all sides, and the State is going from strength to strength. On this occasion I am am prepared to say that it is totally the result of State policies, when we get around to a federal election, I will be claiming some part of that responsibility from our own policies. At the moment it is all yours, and thank you for allowing me to be a part of it.